Rice head coach David Bailiff used several powerful adjectives to describe seven-year-old signee Fre'Derick Young-Redd III.
"Intelligent," "strong," "witty," "inquisitive" and "energetic," among others.
Bailiff then went on to give him one of the greatest compliments of his young life.
"He's a fighter," Bailiff told Bleacher Report. "Someone I'm proud to have on my team."
When he talks about the new signee, Bailiff speaks of someone who will be an outstanding asset to the Rice football team. He's a young cub with the heart of a lion, particularly with the life he's lived.
For starters, the new signee is a survivor of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL, a form of cancer starting from white blood cells in the bone marrow. ALL develops either from lymphocytes, a specific type of white blood cell central to the immune system, or from lymphoblasts, an immature type of lymphocyte.
Call him Ziggy. All of his family and friends do, as well as his new teammates: the members of the Rice football team.
The guys he considers "his brothers."
"I never had big brothers before," Ziggy said. "They make me feel like I'm part of the team forever."
"I'm Going to Help Motivate Them"
Born in Greenville, Mississippi, Ziggy moved with his family to the Greater Houston area and received cancer treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Doctors first diagnosed him with ALL as a four-year-old. His cancer went into remission in 2013 but returned the following year.
Ziggy first connected with the Rice players a couple of months ago during an inpatient hospital visit. After conversing and playing a couple of games, it didn't take long for Ziggy to make a great impression with the Rice players, particularly with quarterback Driphus Jackson.
"The biggest thing that got me with him was his character," Jackson said. "When we first went to go visit him, just seeing how big his eyes got is something I'll never forget. He warmed up to us instantly.
"At first, he was kind of shy with us, but once we got the football in his hands, and once we got him moving around, he really opened up to us. We did warm-up drills, and he picked up where we started. At seven, that's phenomenal."
Once viewed as an introvert, Ziggy, when in the Rice locker room, is now looked at as just another teammate. He stretches with the team. He runs routes with receivers. He does drills with the running backs. Bailiff even had him working with the special teams group attempting to kick field goals.
And like any good player wanting to help his teammates get better, he isn't ashamed to express himself for the good of the team.
"He told me that he thought some of the players weren't running hard enough. That was absolutely comical," Bailiff said. "He's told a couple guys they need to keep their grades up. He's not that shy little boy we saw at the press conference."
"They needed to work harder," Ziggy added. "I'm going to help motivate them."
Every good team needs a player or two like that—regardless of his age.
The Big Surprise
The entire signing ceremony came as a shock to Ziggy. Credit Ziggy's mother, Philandis Stovall, for that. She said he didn't have any idea what was going on until she told him as they were sitting down before the start of the ceremony.
And when he signed, he gave a short but sincere acceptance speech, one that triggered a large ovation of excited Rice teammates.
"He said, 'Thanks for allowing me to be a part of your team,'" Stovall said. "He interacts well with people, and people seem to embrace him, sometimes just by looking at him. If you meet him for the first time, you'd probably think he was older than he was."
After the signing, Ziggy later went to practice. He had his questions, of course.
"He said, 'Can I talk to you?'" Bailiff said. "Then he asked, 'Those guys over there...they're my teammates? Is that stadium mine? How about the clock?'"
Quick and witty, Ziggy knows how to put a smile on every face around the facility. His charm is one of his many assets. His refusal to live life with a frown is another. For someone fighting cancer for the second time—in such a short amount of time—his attitude toward everything is beyond impressive.
"The fact this football team keeps his spirits up, it really says a lot," Bailiff said. "What's best is, I think he's actually helped some of our young men more than they've helped him."
In addition to his cancer treatments, Ziggy has also conquered both kidney failure and pneumonia. He has been in intensive care for both, and on both occasions he's come out on top.
Stovall calls her son "the miracle child" and firmly believes that he's where he is now because of "the two F's."
"It's fight and faith," she said. "Chemo is not your average treatment...but you can't even tell he's a cancer patient. That's how he handles it."
Jackson added: "Seeing him, it melts you. You ask yourself, 'What more can I do for him?'"
Learning From Brothers
Ziggy has a younger sister, four-year-old Zai. He's now proud to have an extensive family of more than 100 brothers and more than two dozen father figures with the Rice coaching staff and administration.
One of the players who first built a relationship with Ziggy was Jackson. As the youngest sibling in his immediate family, Jackson said he always gravitates to younger kids in an effort to play the big-brother role.
"To see him gravitate toward me, as well, that was a big thing for me," Jackson said, "It was probably bigger for me than it was for him."
Since the initial meeting, Jackson and Ziggy have been nearly inseparable. Now a member of the team, Ziggy makes it a priority to do everything his teammates do on the field. He practices very hard on campus and is making sure he is working hard away from campus.
His mother even said the signing has made Ziggy want to do more both athletically and academically.
"With academics, we were doing homework through the week. Now we do it on weekends, too," Stovall said. "I was working out before, but now he'll say, 'Mom, let's go work out.' He’s definitely picked it up.
"Overall, with everything he's been through and is going through, the good still outweighs the bad."
The energy of this seven-year-old, Jackson said, will win over the coldest individual. It's his intelligence and free spirit that will put him over the top—particularly when he understands his situation but won't allow it to get him down.
Complaints are minimal. He never uses his condition as a crutch.
In short, he's a warrior. It's one of the many reasons why Rice wanted to sign him. It's also why he's so welcome within the Rice program.
"Having Ziggy a part of this team is like a mother or father hearing their child say his first words," Jackson said. "That's how excited I am, personally, having him on the team. I want to learn how he gets the strength he has. He’s just an amazing young man."
Damon Sayles is a National Recruiting Analyst for Bleacher Report. All quotes were obtained firsthand. Follow Damon via Twitter: @DamonSayles
from Bleacher Report http://ift.tt/1Hov7eI
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